google summer of code

Kyrre Ness Sjobak kyrre at solution-forge.net
Fri Jun 3 18:21:57 UTC 2005


fre, 03.06.2005 kl. 16.23 skrev ness:
> Nils Philippsen wrote:
> 
> >On Fri, 2005-06-03 at 14:19 +0200, ness wrote:
> >  
> >
> >>I'm not actually using fredora, but I want to be active at the 'google
> >>summer of code'. I've got a strange idea for a project, and I think a
> >>distribution is the best organization to call. My project has not
> >>directly sth. to do with fredora, it's more 'distribution independ'.
> >>Would fredora like to be to mentoring organization for such a project?
> >>If so, I'd be happy to tell you more about my project.
> >>    
> >>
> >
> >Chicken and egg problem here, people probably can't answer unless they
> >know more about your proposal.
> >
> >Nils
> >  
> >
> OK, if I understand you right, I shall tell more about my project. My
> first question was wether fredora would mentor a project not directly
> connected to the fredora distribution. But more about my proposal:
> The idea is an udev based authentication using an usb-stick. This means
> following: I put the stick into the pc, then, if a loginmanger is
> started, it will automaticly open a graphical session. If not, a shell
> based session will start. I think I could add interesting expands to
> that, such as automaticly open encrypted devices... I'd realize this
> (means: writing patches for common dm, write the udev rule and so on)
> and write config tools. If you want, I sent you a complete spec of what
> I'd be going to do.

Interesting :)

Could the users homedir lie encrypted on such a device (say, a standard
usb memory stick), and when presented with such a stick, the machine
would ask for the users password (witch would also be the encryption
key, and log the user in? Could be really usefull for simple setups with
many users - say a school, or a village in India. With this setup, they
could hand out such sticks to student, witch they could plug into any
computer to login, or take home to retrive his/her data. Some
linux/windows/mac-based "client" must then be aviable to decrypt data.)

What about some kind of personal authentification using a gpg-key on the
stick? Problem is that if you have the stick, you should not be able to
retrive the key... But if the stick works as a decryption device (the
computer sends data to stick, stick decrypts using on-board CPU, sticks
sends unencrypted data to computer) - but that would require some HW
hacking.

Kyrre




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